Is beauty really subjective or is it objectively determined by God?

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Oreoracle said:
So “This painting is beautiful” has no truth value but “This painting is beautiful to Oreoracle” does.
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And when the blind man says “This painting is not objectively beautiful” to him, does he mean it is not objectively beautiful at all? Or does he say, “It may be objectively beautiful but who am I to judge?”
 
Oreoracle said:
So “This painting is beautiful” has no truth value but “This painting is beautiful to Oreoracle” does.
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This is so blindingly obvious that I cannot understand how can it be denied… Let’s make a minor change to illustrate their irrationality:

“This dish is too salty” has no truth value, but “this dish is too salty for PA” does… or
“This weight is heavy” has no truth value, but “this weight is heavy for this child” does… or
“The bridge is too far” has no truth value, but “the bridge is too far for a quadriplegic” does… or
“The music is too loud” has no truth value, but “the music is too loud for an autistic person” does…

or zillions of other examples. The amount of salt in the dish, or the weight of the rock, or the distance of the bridge, or the decibel of the music are all objective values, but the relationship with the observer is NOT.

This has been pointed out many times, but the other party keeps digging their collective feet into the sand, or putting their collective heads into the sand, and keep singing: “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”. Pitiful, really.
 
Pallas_Athene said:
This is so blindingly obvious that I cannot understand how can it be denied… Let’s make a minor change to illustrate their irrationality:

“This dish is too salty” has no truth value, but “this dish is too salty for PA” does… or
“This weight is heavy” has no truth value, but “this weight is heavy for this child” does… or
“The bridge is too far” has no truth value, but “the bridge is too far for a quadriplegic” does… or
“The music is too loud” has no truth value, but “the music is too loud for an autistic person” does…

or zillions of other examples. The amount of salt in the dish, or the weight of the rock, or the distance of the bridge, or the decibel of the music are all objective values, but the relationship with the observer is NOT.

This has been pointed out many times, but the other party keeps digging their collective feet into the sand, or putting their collective heads into the sand, and keep singing: “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”. Pitiful, really.
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Some subjective truth values have objective truth values. “Beauty exists” is an objective truth value because we discover it. There is such a thing as beauty, otherwise you would never of experienced beauty. Yes, these things are experienced subjectively, but these things speak to experiential values that go beyond quantification and infer meaning beyond the objects of experience. It is the meaning that we discover in a painting that is beautiful. You cannot say that this meaning is made up or artificial. The objects by which we discover beauty may change and vary, but beauty is discovered and its existence is real.

If all human beings ceased to exist the various objects by which we discovered beauty would still exist and so would beauty. The fact that only a mind can discover it is interesting. And if only a mind can discover it, and beauty is not quantifiable, then beauty at it’s core is non-physical and since meaning cannot exist outside of a mind then the act of existing in God’s mind would explain the experience of beauty. So the relativist atheist kind of shoots them self in the foot by claiming that beauty does not exist in the physical object of our experience. They would be better off saying that beauty is physical and objective.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
And when the blind man says “This painting is not objectively beautiful” to him, does he mean it is not objectively beautiful at all? Or does he say, “It may be objectively beautiful but who am I to judge?”
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I don’t intend to speak for a hypothetical person.

Let’s use something that people have less of an emotional attachment to, such as pain. Would you argue that the spikes of a porcupine are objectively painful, and that hard-shelled animals who don’t feel pain at contact are just numb to the pain which objectively exists? I don’t think anyone would argue that. I think most people would say that the spikes objectively exist, the pain felt by some animals on contact with those spikes objectively exists, but the spikes are not “objectively painful”. “Painfulness” (unfortunate quirk of English here) is a relation between subject and stimulus, not an inherent property of matter.
 
Oreoracle said:
I don’t intend to speak for a hypothetical person.

Let’s use something that people have less of an emotional attachment to, such as pain. Would you argue that the spikes of a porcupine are objectively painful, and that hard-shelled animals who don’t feel pain at contact are just numb to the pain which objectively exists? I don’t think anyone would argue that. I think most people would say that the spikes objectively exist, the pain felt by some animals on contact with those spikes objectively exists, but the spikes are not “objectively painful”. Pain is a relation between subject and stimulus, not an inherent property of matter.
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Yes Pain exists Objectively.
 
Oreoracle said:
I don’t intend to speak for a hypothetical person.

Let’s use something that people have less of an emotional attachment to, such as pain. Would you argue that the spikes of a porcupine are objectively painful, and that hard-shelled animals who don’t feel pain at contact are just numb to the pain which objectively exists? I don’t think anyone would argue that. I think most people would say that the spikes objectively exist, the pain felt by some animals on contact with those spikes objectively exists, but the spikes are not “objectively painful”. Pain is a relation between subject and stimulus, not an inherent property of matter.
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Well, here’s the rub.

Pain would not exist except for the objective spikes.

Beauty would not exist except for the objective traits of the things we call beautiful.

A beautiful woman does not cease to be beautiful because a blind man cannot see her.

Your soul may not cease to be in pain because I cannot feel your pain.

The sources of pain and beauty are objective existents.

Live with it. 😉
 
Pallas_Athene said:
This is so blindingly obvious that I cannot understand how can it be denied… Let’s make a minor change to illustrate their irrationality:

“This dish is too salty” has no truth value, but “this dish is too salty for PA” does… or
“This weight is heavy” has no truth value, but “this weight is heavy for this child” does… or
“The bridge is too far” has no truth value, but “the bridge is too far for a quadriplegic” does… or
“The music is too loud” has no truth value, but “the music is too loud for an autistic person” does…

or zillions of other examples. The amount of salt in the dish, or the weight of the rock, or the distance of the bridge, or the decibel of the music are all objective values, but the relationship with the observer is NOT.
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It seems that you are agreeing that the saltiness of the dish, the heaviness of the rock, the distance of the bridge and the loudness of the music all have some objective value to them, otherwise it would make perfect sense to speak of the saltiness of the bridge, the loudness of the rock or any other combination that is obviously nonsensical if the objective value is completely denied.

Sure there is a subjective element to the values, but the values are objectively ABOUT things in the world not fabricated holus bolus in the depths of subjective imagination.

“This is so blindingly obvious that I cannot understand how can it be denied.”
 
If it makes you guys feel any better, it’s not like we’re trying to pull a fast one and make something that is concrete abstract instead. Even very concrete things are often defined in relative terms. For example, there is no “absolute velocity”, there is only velocity relative to a reference frame. This doesn’t make physics a matter of opinion, but it does mean that the way things are described depends on the reference frame you choose.
 
Oreoracle said:
Are porcupines objectively painful? After all, the spikes are still painful even if an animal can’t feel them. :rolleyes:
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Apparently you have difficulty identifying the difference between subject and object. The object of the pain, in your example, happens to be the subject who is stuck by them. Porcupine quills do not carry pain in them, the capacity to suffer or feel pain is an objective capacity of subjects. We happen to be subjects, that does not make us non-objective observers.

We can be objective about the experience of pain because of the objective nature of our physiology. It isn’t all “in our heads,” it is objectively in the way we are constructed. We, too, are “objects” in the world.
 
GodMadeMe said:
There is such a thing as beauty, otherwise you would never of experienced beauty.
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Beauty is a concept not an ontological entity - it is not a “thing”. “Tastiness” or “saltiness” are concepts, “heaviness” or “lightness” are concepts, and so is “nearness”, “loudness” and all the other adjectives.

The point is that you guys wish to “drag” God into a sphere of reality, where there is no place for God. Beauty is especially “undefined”. At least “saltiness” can be defined as a lot of salt in the food (what is a "lot?), but to decide if a dish is “overly salty” or “just bland” is contingent upon the taste of person. But “beauty” is impossible to define. Harmony or symmetry are all irrelevant. In the Oriental frame of mind the perfect symmetry is NOT beautiful, a little asymmetry is better. Just look at a Japanese scroll of flowers, there is always some asymmetry there. A little blemish is considered to be more beautiful than a perfectly created “plate” (for example). The point is that the concept of “beauty” is culturally driven.
 
Pallas_Athene said:
Beauty is a concept not an ontological entity - it is not a “thing”.
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Therein is your problem. You are a materialist because you are an atheist. If you cannot put a thing under a microscope and study it, it cannot exist in its own right.

No Catholic in this forum has denied that the subjective appreciation of the beautiful is just that … subjective … meaning it is an experience in the soul. What you seem to be denying is that there are any objective grounds for the existence of beauty outside the soul. .

The materialist cannot abide metaphysics.

Let’s just agree that that is our impasse, and leave it at that? 🤷

A stunning sunrise or sunset is beautiful whether or not anyone sees it … because God sees it even if we don’t … and God is the Supreme Artist.

As with all things God created, he saw that they were good, and of course beautiful because whatever is good is beautiful, and whatever is beautiful is true.

You don’t see the metaphysical dots being connected here, but we do. .
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Therein is your problem. You are a materialist because you are an atheist. If you cannot put a thing under a microscope and study it, it cannot exist in its own right.
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What nonsense. The number “one” cannot be put under a microscope, but it exists as a CONCEPT. There is a difference between actual, ontological existence and conceptual existence. Jack and Jill; the witch with the iron nose, or Santa Claus all exist as CONCEPTS, not as ontological entities. If the Sun would go supernova, and all the Earth would be burned to cinder, our concepts of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny etc… would disappear.

The problem is in your court, since you (personally) cannot comprehend the difference between ontological an conceptual existence. I met many theists who had no problem with this distinction.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
No Catholic in this forum has denied that the subjective appreciation of the beautiful is just that … subjective … meaning it is an experience in the soul. What you seem to be denying is that there are any objective grounds for the existence of beauty outside the soul.
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Perhaps we are talking past each other. I agree that there can be an explanation of why beauty is experienced in the manner it is which makes use of objective facts. For example, we can explain scientifically why most men find certain features of women attractive. In this sense the experience of beauty is grounded in reality. But it is just that: an experience. Others may not share that experience (homosexuals, asexuals, etc.), so it would be incorrect to say “curvy women are beautiful”, for example, without further qualification.
 
Pallas_Athene said:
What nonsense. The number “one” cannot be put under a microscope, but it exists as a CONCEPT. There is a difference between actual, ontological existence and conceptual existence. Jack and Jill; the witch with the iron nose, or Santa Claus all exist as CONCEPTS, not as ontological entities. If the Sun would go supernova, and all the Earth would be burned to cinder, our concepts of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny etc… would disappear.

The problem is in your court, since you (personally) cannot comprehend the difference between ontological an conceptual existence. I met many theists who had no problem with this distinction.
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The number 1 is an abstract invention to signify an objective reality.

Different people don’t look at the number 1 and not see the number 1.

Your attempt to equate the number 1 with something that is beautiful is dead on arrival.

Very poor logic here. Try harder. 🤷
 
Oreoracle said:
Perhaps we are talking past each other. I agree that there can be an explanation of why beauty is experienced in the manner it is which makes use of objective facts. For example, we can explain scientifically why most men find certain features of women attractive. In this sense the experience of beauty is grounded in reality. But it is just that: an experience. Others may not share that experience (homosexuals, asexuals, etc.), so it would be incorrect to say “curvy women are beautiful”, for example, without further qualification.
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This is the same error Athena tripped into.

Curvy is not in the same category as the beautiful.

Nobody argues about whether a curve is curved.

We all pretty much agree that a curve is a curve.

The beautiful Audrey Hepburn was, by most accounts, deficient in curves.

Though they may well contribute, curves are not essential to the beauty of a woman.
 
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